Welcome to my blog. This is a series of thoughts about my day, my kids achievements, general thoughts and where I can avoid annoying people too much on Facebook. I'm a chronic over-sharer, this is a little more private, actually its not, but I feel that it is. A word of warning, I don't proof read and type as I think it, so if its a little convoluted you know why!

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Thursday, April 09, 2015

Ashamed to be Australian.

For the past year or so, I have been listening to my radio about the Royal Commission into the Institutional Response to Child Abuse. This means the Catholic Church, the Salvation Army, the Boy Scouts, elite private schools, they all have a very dark history of child physical and sexual abuse. It has been harrowing listening and I hope they give the journalists following it some counseling as on my drive home, I am often in tears. Anyway, this royal commission has just finished its public hearings and they are in their discussions to make their report to the government.

Whilst this has been happening.... there have been subdued reports followed by very public declarations that sexual abuse is occuring to underage asylum seekers on Nauru and Mannis Island. These are detention centres for people fleeing their home country to make their lives in Australia - granted some of them are economic refugees, but most of these refugee get asylum status after what is normally quite a long detention.

So far there has been many reports that long detention CAUSES mental health problems, there are huge instances of self harm, self neglect and suicide attempts. Yet the Australian government put CHILDREN in these centres, the government that I had a hand in voting for (it wouldn't matter what side I vote for, the policy is the same). I don't want to be associated with a government that voluntarily sets people up for life long mental illness. But they are also covering up the sexual abuse that is occurring there. So our government which is condemning the catholic church of covering up the pedophiles is doing exactly the same thing at the same time they are trying to find out what happened in the catholic church.

As an individual person, what can I do? I would like to vote them out, but the other side will do the same.